No Excuses: Bartram Trail has the pieces in place for something special

Bears have the talent, the hunger and the confidence to go as far as they want to go

Bartram Trail football players Korey Harris (9), Nathan Peterman (4), Bobby Walker (7), Jared Crump (5) and Gabe Johnson (2) will all be playing in college next season. But they’ve got some unfinished business to take care of first.

Korey Harris (9), Jared Crump (5), Bobby Walker (7), Nathan Peterman (4) and Gabe Johnson (2) are all desirable college recruits. But they’ve got an eye on some unfinished business in 2011 — winning their district, beating rival St. Augustine for the first time and turning in the best season in program history.

Korey Harris (9), Jared Crump (5), Bobby Walker (7), Nathan Peterman (4) and Gabe Johnson (2) are all desirable college recruits. But they’ve got an eye on some unfinished business in 2011 — winning their district, beating rival St. Augustine for the first time and turning in the best season in program history.

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How can Bartram Trail, with its prime-time recruits and rock star quarterback possibly be a team of destiny?

Shouldn't this story begin on a farm where a bat is carved from a tree struck by lightning? Where is the 5-foot-6 boy from Illinois, hoping for his shot to play for Notre Dame?

As the Bears plan to prove, not every great team needs to start with a great story.

Bartram's journey has all the feel-good qualities of a monster truck rally. If this were a movie, the only patrons would be clad in royal blue, black and silver.

And at the end of the day, the Bears could care less. Arguably the best collection of talent in the school's 11-year history wants to leave an unmatched legacy.

Beat St. Augustine, go undefeated, bring home the school's first state title. Who needs suspense when you have all of that?

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Expectations are a funny thing. How often in sports does great promise come after pronounced failure? The answer, of course, is all the time.

Bartram's players can relate.

The Bears entered last season with a talented, yet unproven junior class. They were one of the most intriguing teams in St. Johns County, but there was nothing unique about how it all ended.

Bartram lost to St. Augustine 16-15 in the Class 4A regional quarterfinals. While that game, dominated by the Bears for three quarters, was the closest between the two programs in their history, it was essentially the same.

St. Augustine is 12-0 against Bartram and has sent the Bears home each of the last two seasons. They beat them twice in 2010 alone, including a 27-10 victory in Week 2 where the Yellow Jackets scored all of their points in the fourth quarter.

And here's a rough stat to toss in the pot: In four of the more recent games -- the 2010 playoff and regular season games, the 2009 playoff game and the 2008 regular season game -- the Bears have outscored St. Augustine 34-27 in the first half, only to be outscored 68-10 after the break. Not included in that total is the 2009 regular season game, a 49-7 blowout by the Yellow Jackets, that left no such room for a collapse.

Bartram's players, however, insist all of that is in the past. They say that playoff loss changed them. It was painful, yes, but the mark it left was indelible.

"That's one thing that we've kind of had to deal with in the past," said senior receiver Bobby Walker, "that we were already beaten before we even started the game. I think there's something that we now take in our minds that they are beatable and we do think that we are the better team now."

Getting past that mental block appears to be the key to this offseason. It's not so much about St. Augustine as it as about accepting the inevitable.

This group has the potential to do something special. It's about time they start acting like it.

In addition to Walker, who has several offers from Football Bowl Subdivision schools, including Illinois and Mississippi, the team returns nearly every piece of last year's near-miss squad.

Leading them is quarterback Nathan Peterman, who is headed to Tennessee next season, defensive end Korey Harris (West Virginia) and wideout Jared Crump, who holds offers from West Virginia, Cincinnati, Vanderbilt, North Carolina State and Wake Forest. Steady kicker Cole Leininger, who has offers from TCU and Purdue, and running back Gabe Johnson (Georgia State) shouldn't be discounted either.

That alone has people talking. More importantly, it has them believing as well.

"I think we're realizing that it's all coming to an end and we want to go out with a bang and leave a legacy for five, 10, 15 years to come," Crump said. "We're not just winning for this year. We're winning for years to come."

If you like counting, there are plenty of numbers to support this transformation. After throwing just seven touchdowns and 12 interceptions as a sophomore, Peterman led the county last season with 2,016 yards passing, 20 scores and a measly six picks. Crump, who was playing his first season after transferring from Mandarin, had a touchdown every third catch and ended up with 11. Walker led the team in catches with 43 and Harris had eight sacks.

Care to predict this year's ceiling? The thought alone is scary.

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So Bartram has it all. They have experience, talent, chemistry and motivation. Not to mention, desperation.

As Peterman points out, that might be the most important factor yet.

"In past years we could go through the middle of the season and be thinking, 'Well if this isn't our year (we have another one),'" he said. "We didn't want to say it but in the back of your mind you always have that. ... But this year we can't leave anything back."

It's simple, really. Bartram has one shot, one chance to make it count.

There is only one team in the school's history that can compare to this squad, as far as talent goes.

In 2007, Clemson-bound quarterback Kyle Parker led the Bears within a game of the state finals. He was joined on the major college level the next season by tight end Andrew Parker (Wake Forest), cornerback Xavier Brewer (Clemson) and receiver Charles Bailey (Mississippi State).

While this year's group appreciates the history, they don't want to repeat it.

"I think we have a lot of respect for them and look up to them a lot," Peterman said. "They were able to do something great at Bartram. But at the same time they didn't go undefeated and they didn't get to state, so we're setting the bar higher."

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It's impossible to know how long it took Bartram to overcome last season's stinging conclusion. According to them, it was minutes. That might actually be true.

It takes even less time to realize there's definitely something different about this group.

Over the years, players at Bartram have seemed wired to say the right thing like a circuit in a well-trained robot.

It's one of the things that makes the program special.

At the High School Awareness Media Day in early August, a group of the team's seniors, Peterman, Harris and safety Jolen Briggs each wrote the same answer on a survey for the Florida Times Union.

The question was, "Which team would you most like to beat?"

They each wrote "We want to pursue excellence."

How is that possible?

"It's a lot of fun (the hype)," Briggs said. "We talk about it all the time. But we still know what we got to do. We can't let it eat us up too much, but we have to keep it in the back of our heads."

All of this starts with their coach, Darrell Sutherland. Sutherland, who started from Day 1, is topped only by St. Augustine's Joey Wiles as the longest tenured coach in the county. His demeanor, in all conditions, is unshakable. Sutherland said the same could be said of this year's team.

"It's even more than there is not a sense of entitlement about these guys. They don't feel like anything was given to them. They enjoy working," he said. "I think the fact that a lot of them are going through the same things, there is a camaraderie there and ability to keep each other grounded. ... This is the same group that has started since they were sophomores. They've put a lot of time and energy into everything. They've had highs and lows. That really lends itself to working hard."

Yet, with everything that's happened, and with everything that could, some of the cracks of excitement are starting to show.

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It's easy to look at Bartram and dismiss them to some degree. On the surface, not much has changed from a team that lost four times a season ago. While that could be deemed a strength, it could also be looked at as a weakness.

Walker said it won't take long for people to realize which theory to side with.

"I think it's really just the swagger." Walker said.

"Before, we were a good team but we didn't know it. I think now, the difference is that we know and feel that we are the best team around here and we just have that swagger around ourselves."

This is likely to rub some programs and fans the wrong way, as a few of Bartram's players have admitted is already happening.

With recruiting comes attention. The key now is to justify it.

In some ways, this is the first time in Bartram's history that people are marking the Bears as the team to beat.

"It is nice," Johnson said. "It feels really good having everyone looking up to us. I can't wait to prove it."

Added Briggs: "It's fun having that target on your back. It let's you know that people are thinking about you, worried about you a little bit. We're just going to go out there and show them what we got."

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There are plenty of ways to explain this, but it's easier to hear it from the source. Listen to Walker.

"They'll see come whenever it comes, whatever day that is."

"Oct. 21," Crump immediately chimes in.

"It will be a hush moment on the first kickoff. They'll see."

What are they talking about? By now, I'm sure you can figure it out.

Week 8 Bartram will head to St. Augustine, a District 4-6A game that should decide who finishes runner-up and who rests on top.

Naturally, that game will be about a lot more than logistics. The Bears can waltz into St. Augustine 7-0, but a loss there would speak louder than every one of their wins.

That night will be a chance to show everyone that Bartram is worthy of the ink, especially themselves.

"They're a great team and we have a lot of respect for them," Peterman said of St. Augustine.

"But they're in our district now and to go be district champs and everything we're going to have to beat them. But we're really just focusing on every week, one week at a time and trying to do our best."

Wiles, as is the case with all coaches in the county, is spending most of his energy these days focusing on his own team.

Rivalries aside, both teams understand that these types of things will sort themselves out in due time. For now, taking care of what's in front of them remains the main objective.

"Who we are at our school is that we're going to do every thing we can possibly do within our ability and not worry about what's out there," Wiles said.

"... All we worry about, we worry about ourselves. We've never worried about anyone else."

To this point, Bartram shouldn't expect anything else. Yet, it's clear the buzz around the program is unlike anything the school has ever generated, and the best part begins right about now. The countdown to greatness is finished. The only question is, where will it end up?